Co11ab: Augmenting Accessibility in Synchronous Collaborative Writing for People with Vision Impairments

Collaborative writing is an integral part of academic and professional work. Although some prior research has focused on accessibility in collaborative writing, we know little about how visually impaired writers work in real-time with sighted collaborators or how online editing tools could better support their work. Grounded in formative interviews and observations with eight screen reader users, we built Co11ab, a Google Docs extension that provides configurable audio cues to facilitate understanding who is editing (or edited) what and where in a shared document. Results from a design exploration with fifteen screen reader users, including three naturalistic sessions of use with sighted colleagues, reveal how screen reader users understand various auditory representations and use them to coordinate real-time collaborative writing. We revisit what collaboration awareness means for screen reader users and discuss design considerations for future systems.